


two can keep a secret

by magisterequitum



Category: Psy-Changeling - Nalini Singh
Genre: Gen, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 14:37:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1095128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magisterequitum/pseuds/magisterequitum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nikita’s daughter is four when she realizes Sascha will never be anything that she can be proud of.</p>
            </blockquote>





	two can keep a secret

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ivyspinners](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivyspinners/gifts).



Nikita’s daughter is four when she realizes Sascha will never be anything that she can be proud of. 

A harsh statement but the Psy race is not a forgiving one. Silence does not allow for the loving touch of a parent or things like pride. Though children are a genetic marking code that passes to the next generation, and at times even children would inherit from a parent a business or line of some other succession. Children are offspring to carry on the DNA abilities to the next generation. It is the only sentiment allowed. 

Nikita has produced a cardinal daughter, and Sascha’s eyes shine velvet black with pinpricks of white light. Eyes that are marked for power or should be. Herself being a high gradient telepath and the person she had entered into a conception contract with being highly skilled as well, she had not been shocked at Sascha’s birth. 

_Mother_ The telepathic ping is faint despite even the fact that Nikita has a direct line of communication to Sascha. Despite too that Sascha is in the formal area of their suites and Nikita is a wall away in her private office. 

Nikita doesn’t look away from the research she is looking at. Land appraisals and estimated timelines for a new housing project that she hopes to launch in three months. _Yes_ she responds. 

The rooms sit just a floor above her business office in the corporate headquarters she’d only bought and taken over six years ago. The building is in the middle of San Francisco. She’d gutted it after buying it, rebuilding it in the perfect image of what she would rule from. Plans for taking a Council seat would require no less than perfection and might. 

_Why are you upset?_

That does make Nikita look away. Her hands still where she had been about to turn a page on her datapad. An abnormal question. _What do you mean?_ she asks and her voice is icy along the telepathic link. 

_That man today. He told you bad news._ A jumble of images as Sascha seeks to relay her thoughts to Nikita’s mind, but it’s fuzzy. She cannot convey what she wishes. 

As she shouldn’t be since Sascha has been with her instructor all day and no where near enough Nikita’s offices or business meetings to know this. She speaks of the exchange where one of her economic advisor had delivered declining profit numbers in the Oakland sector. Loss in profits is unacceptable to her future aspirations. She has meticulously planned for years now. She will not fail. 

Nikita rises from her desk, taking measures steps in her heels till she is in the open formal room. There’s little in it. White bare walls and a couch and table, at which she finds Sascha mouthing along words on a list in front of her. Inconsequential things that all Psy children are given for development from their instructors. Her daughter does not lack in intelligence. 

She had thought she lacked in talent and abilities. 

She thinks she had been wrong. Or rather thinking of a different ability she’d willed Sacha to take on. 

“Sascha,” she says, switching to verbal present communication. She takes a seat on the couch, a hand’s distance between her and her smaller daughter’s body. 

She stops reciting the words from the list, folding her hands in her lap and turning to face her fully. White stars bleat softly in her black gaze. “Yes, Mother?” So well polite already for even her young age. 

“Why did you ask me if I was upset?” Nikita’s hands rest flat on her suit’s pants, palms steady on the fabric. 

Sascha’s right eyebrow twitches. A minuscule movement but noticeable. A flaw that will be corrected. “I felt it,” she says. Her tone is even but there’s hesitation in her answer. 

“We do not feel,” Nikita’s voice is as cold as she has ever been. 

The white leaves her daughter’s eyes. Nothing but black velvet stares at her now. And then, “I do.” 

_I feel everyone._ whispered softer into her mind, a confession and fear laced.

Nikita’s palms spasm on her thighs. She had thought and counted that maybe the genetic marker from her lineage would be masked or disposed of. It seems that she has been wrong. 

_Is there something wrong with me? Am I sick?”_ A simplistic questioning for asking if she is flawed. Her daughter is not stupid. 

She looks at Sascha, there sitting next to her. Looks at the curling hair so different from her own straight, the darker skin, the night dark eyes, her list of words and lesson sitting on the table, the waiting and questioning in the line of small shoulders. Looks and thinks on her options. It is easy enough to conjure them to mind. Just as it is easy enough to know that she is young enough to enter into another conception contract. No one would blink an eye at it. Progeny is everything. Mistakes and flaws weaknesses to anyone wanting a higher place in the world. 

“Tomorrow,” Nikita says, already changing her schedule, “we will practice your shields.”


End file.
